Saturday’s Horse Racing Tips: Tom Collins bids for another successful weekend

That was a short-lived summer, wasn’t it? Wintery downpours hit the country on Wednesday and caused the cancellation of Salisbury while turning the ground soft elsewhere.

Predicting winners is always tougher this time of year. We have now entered the backend of the flat season, so plenty of horses have done a lot of running over the last few months and may not be firing on all cylinders. When you couple that with testing ground, results can prove pretty tough to fathom.

As a result, I’m just going to bet one horse on the turf on Saturday and that is Jasour, who is a fair each-way price at 11/1 in the Group 1 Sprint Cup (3.35) at Haydock. The ground is described as ‘good to soft’ at the time of writing this column on Thursday afternoon and a surprisingly dry Friday up in Merseyside may keep it that way.

I have kept a close eye on Jasour since his July Stakes victory as a two-year-old and, although he has only won one of his five subsequent starts, it is clear to me that he’s a top-quality sprinter with sky-high potential if he learns to drop his head in the early stages of a race.

He did that to some degree on his comeback run earlier this year, where he scooted from last to first under a good ride from Jim Crowley to win the Commonwealth Cup trial at Ascot. He then went to the Commonwealth Cup itself and lost his chance by racing freely in the first furlong, though it is fair to say that he performed extremely admirably to still grab third behind runaway winner Inisherin.

A poor start and taking a keen hold was again his undoing in the July Cup, but he wasn’t beaten all that far that day either and was surely worth marking up given how inefficiently he raced. Good to soft ground is a positive for him and trainer Clive Cox does brilliantly with this type of sprinter, so hopefully he has worked the oracle during his 56-day layoff from the track. 

The likes of Inisherin, Elite Status and Swingalong are solid, but Jasour has as much upside without yet showing his true ability. There are far worse bets than playing him each-way at 11/1 and hoping that he settles. 

My other two selections come at Kempton, starting with Lion’s Pride in the Group 3 September Stakes (2.35), a race that John Gosden has won four times in the last six years. Now in a training partnership with son Thady, he can add to that tally with this four-year-old, who should relish the return to the all-weather after two lacklustre turf displays.

Lion’s Pride has won two of his three starts here and beaten the likes of Middle Earth and Measured Time in the process. Not bad, right? He hasn’t been able to transfer that form to grass, which makes his form figures appear less enticing, but that’s largely irrelevant now that he gets back on the Tapeta.

If he can reproduce his performance in the Floodlit Stakes last November (RPR 119) then he will be mighty tough to beat under Kieran Shoemark. Hamish has been a brilliant servant for the Haggas team and Kalpana could still be improving, but Lion’s Pride is undoubtedly the horse to beat in this spot.

Finally, I have been waiting to back Rakki over two miles and I have been given a chance to do just that in the closing London Stayers’ Series Qualifier (5.30 Kempton). This son of Sea The Stars featured in my ‘Horses to follow’ article at the start of the year with my advice being to back him once he was stepped up in distance.

Rakki looked a little one paced over trips around 1m4f, but he took a notable step forward over 1m6f last time at Sandown where he was just chinned by Almudena. That rival will reoppose on Saturday but I fancy Rakki to reverse the form with a 10lb weight swing.

He shaped with good promise in a couple of juvenile starts here last year, so the track shouldn’t be an issue, and the extra emphasis on stamina should make him a big player. Drawn well in stall five, hopefully Rakki can go close at what I suspect will be a tasty price.

Saturday’s Horse Racing Tips

Lion’s Pride (2.35 Kempton) @ 5/2
Jasour (3.35 Haydock) @ 13/1
Rakki (5.30 Kempton) @ 15/2